House of Zack
by trumpet echoes
Summary: It is rumored that college and high school students had the highest survival rate of any age group of the epidemic. Whether or not this is true is unknown, but they nonetheless appear to be the ones most capable of writing stories.
1. Tyler

House of Zack

I almost didn't bother avoiding the fallen corpse in my path as I ran –I was rather drained of the shock factor that seeing a corpse once held for me—but I did manage a somewhat clumsy leap when I realized that I could nonetheless trip over the damned thing. And tripping would be a very, very bad thing when you are running from a mob of the undead.

"Hey," shouted Jay ahead of me. "Isn't that the guy we saw when we came in?"

"Yeah," I was out of breath, and my none-to-graceful style of running put a bounce in my tone. "Think so. What about it?" I heard several thumps behind us; apparently our clammy pursuers hadn't bothered avoiding the obstacle as I had.

"I mean he was still dead. Not one of them." He jerked a thumb behind him at the dozen-or-more pack of zombies we had en tow.

"What does-" I managed to get out before succumbing to a coughing fit. I admit I wasn't in the best of shape; I'm a band nerd, not a marathon runner. True, I can jog a mile on the treadmill like a beast, but I'm not one to sprint through campus buildings, hurdling over fallen desks, chairs, and potted plants. Or bodies, for that matter.

"What does…(pant)…that have to do with anything?"

Jay, who was of course in great shape, and not the least bit out of breath, responded with: "Well if he isn't trying to fucking eat us, why the fuck are these fuckers?!." It was almost refreshing to hear Jay's extensive cursing in a more appropriate context.

"There are slightly more pressing matters at hand, Jay!" Charles shouted from behind us, his chubby legs pumping as hard as they could to keep up. And, more importantly, away from the decaying mouths of those behind. "He probably wasn't bitten." Charles looked as if he wanted to elaborate more on the subject, but deemed Jay a waste of precious oxygen.

After taking a shortcut through the broken glass door frame of what may have once been a clerk's office, we came to a long hallway and I dared to look behind me without fear of plunging headfirst into a wall. I saw Charles, looking miserably exhausted, and not far behind him, Ginger. Now _she,_ on the other hand, _was_ a marathon runner. I'm guessing she stayed behind us to keep tabs on everyone.

"Just a bit further, everyone," she said encouragingly in her moderate English accent. "If we can beat them in the library, we should be safe."

The library had seemed like such a good idea at the time. That time being, of course, several hours ago, huddled under a windowsill in the music building waiting for the moans to drift away. Not the campus library, of course; the building was more glass than brick, and smack dab in the middle of the university. Designed to be stone's throw away from most of the dormitories, and within easy reach of the students -undergraduate and undead.

No, our goal was the mostly ignored president's library. It was small, sturdy, and very old; built way back in the first days of Clark State University. It has long since been replaced as the university's main library, but some old fart had deemed it "of too much historical importance to the school" to be demolished. So it became the university president's own personal library. Still open to the students, but this was more of a gesture of good will than anything else; as far as I know, the president himself had never set foot in there.

No sooner had the thought crossed my mind that it was a little too convenient that all of the zombies in the area were _behind _us that a middle-aged woman in a tattered, bloody power suit and a vast hole in her cheek that revealed a row of professionally treated molars gurgled her greeting in front of us, almost directly in our path.

"Shit! Now what?!"

"Oh, just barrel her over!"

Jay did so; using his tried-and-true trucking technique (which in no small part led his football team to a regional title), he ran into the woman without breaking stride. Her head recoiled forward –I thought for a moment that it might go so far forward that she would be able to reach the nape of his neck- and we heard a loud _snap! _as her own neck broke, then she toppled to the ground. Jay hurdled over Power Suit Woman and kept pace with us in one semi-fluid motion. Charles and Ginger gave the fallen woman a wide birth as they passed: within seconds, she was up and, broken neck and all, joined the approaching crowd to resume chase.

"Damn," I muttered, mostly under my breath. "These things are tough sons of bitches." It seemed appropriate. I didn't curse all that much before –usually just when we lost another basketball game or when I stepped outside during a Kentucky winter without the proper coat. But they _were_ some though sons of bitches; decayed and ugly as hell, but every bit as solid as the human beings they once were. Why couldn't they be like the zombies in the movies, or in that Michael Jackson video? Shambling, slow, and falling apart?

It'd be pretty cool if they started dancing, too.

Yes, even with my life in peril, being chased by a mob of living corpses, topped off with an overwhelming urge to pee, I was still in my own little world. I was some big, tough Joe Everyman from one of those apocalypse movies, the one that was just your average accountant who also happened to have the physique of a bodybuilder and a terminally persistent five o'clock shadow. You know, the one that leads the rag-tag group of survivors from all walks of life out of the rubble and into the safe haven that was conveniently located in his home town. The Joe Everyman, the one that the beautiful super model/average nurse falls for, the one that starts out shy and subdued but ends up as the one-liner shooting bad ass that everyone (except the other, more criminal-type bad ass that almost kills them all before the credits) follows without hesitation.

The habit that Joe seemed to have of dying at the ends of these movies tried to claw its way into my thoughts, but it was quickly silenced until I saw him: a muscled, tall-dark-and-handsome type in a varsity jacket, slumped over against the wall with blood dripping into his crotch from an unseen wound in his head. _This_ was movie star Joe Everyman. In real life, Joe Everyman the bad ass accountant dies anonymously, without even outliving Tyler Evans, the freshman trumpet player. No explosions, no sum-it-all-up speech on life, no valiant struggle to protect a group of orphans. He just gets bashed in the head and falls beneath the blessed EXIT sign that we were running towards. I was either proud or crushed that I had outlasted Joe; I honestly couldn't tell which.

Then Joe started to get up. Ginger looked as if she was about to kneel down to help him, but the throaty moan reverberating from his throat changed her mind. I had a wrench at my belt that I had planned on using to get passed a locked door, although I had no idea how to go about doing that if the situation came up. Instead, I wielded it in front of me with both hands, and swung it like a baseball bat at Joe's head. I was running, bouncing; it was only a glancing blow, and I was sure that it wouldn't be enough to keep Joe's still-pearly whites out of my throat. But the wrench was sturdier than I thought, and even without a solid force behind it, it managed to break through his skull and exit the other side, with something I hesitantly identified as brain matter trailing behind. Joe fell to the ground, and his moaning stopped.

"Good shot there, Ty," said Ginger, who was now all but pushing poor Charles in front of her. Jay burst open the exit door, flinched as it nearly knocked him on his ass on the rebound, then waited for the three of us to catch up. This was probably a seldom used exit, as it led into some heavily forested path of the campus that I hadn't known existed. The path was skinny, with a large, vine-covered chain link fence on either side. I wasn't too sure that I liked the thought of being boxed in if even one living corpse appeared at the other end of this walkway, but there was no turning back now.

"Jay," she said calmly, "find something heavy that we might be able to block this door with- and quickly!" she added after the pack leaders of our mob of pursuing zombies came into view around the far-off corner of the hallway.

Charles eagerly seized the opportunity to catch his breath, falling to his knees as he floundered through the doorway. "What is going to be heavy enough to stop a horde of those things?" he said wheezily.

"You, maybe," said Jay. Charles was seventy pounds overweight. For a moment, I thought Jay was being serious, and for an even briefer moment, I considered it.

Ginger stared daggers at him. "Now's not the time, Jay! Grab that bench over there-"

"It's made of solid rock!"

"The one _next _to it, the metal one. We can wedge it, prop it on the door."

I think she was about to ask me to help him when she noticed that I was still staring at Joe. He was my first kill.

Ginger placed a maternal hand on my shoulder. "Don't write his eulogy, Tyler. I need you focused on the task at hand. Step out of the way, help Jay with this bench."

I did, but not without one last look at Joe's letterman jacket. I couldn't be sure, but I think he was a senior. Two months from a graduation that he wasn't going to attend.

With a groan from Charles, our group went on it's way again, albeit at more of a jog than a sprint. Ginger kept her eyes behind her, set on the makeshift barricade we had set up. I tried my best to keep my attention forward, but a loud _**clash**_ craned my neck to spare another glance behind. The bench rattled dangerously against the doorknob, but it held fast. I wasn't sure if it would hold _long_, but nonetheless we slowed our pace to a jog, and then a fast walk as Charles failed to match even the more leisurely run for our lives.

I thought of Joe, face down in front of the blocked door with a mob of hungry ghouls standing on his ass.

My thoughts were quickly brought back to the situation at hand. One lone zombie bashed furiously amidst the vines and weeds covering the chain link fence. He wore a very expensive-looking jacket and tie with a loud, simple pattern that said, "I'm important, and I know it." He was severely wounded; a gaping tear in his torso showed the world his bits and pieces, and he was missing his left ear and most of his left eye. His left arm ended in a stump, covered in blood that looked fresh. I wasn't an expert, but I could guess that this guy had died and un-died very recently. He pounded and raked furiously at the chain link fence, searching desperately for a way to get to us.

"Heh, dumbass," said Jay. "The thing is too stupid to look for a way around."

"He'll find one soon enough," said Charles, still winded even at our moderate pace. "I'm guessing the fence will end before the library."

It did. We could see the fence abruptly end, just before the path reached the back yard of a large house, probably the president's. I couldn't see the library, but that didn't concern me as much as the gate we were almost upon; I cursed the brainiac that opted to put a gate so far near the edge of the fence, much less one that led strait into a tree.

"He's following us along the fence," said Charles. He pointed to the gate. "He's going to get through there! Do something!"

I couldn't tell if he was talking to me, but even if he was, what was I going to do? I looked to Ginger; even though she was easily the smallest of the four of us, she appeared to be our leader. We didn't wait long for her to say something.

"Don't worry about the gate," she said. "We'll make a run for that house when we reach the end of the fence. The door looks like it's open."

Open, and off its hinges. But it was better than nothing, and Ginger knew what she was talking about; Mr. Important didn't seem to acknowledge that the gate was there and simply kept banging and clawing, following us along this desolate woodland passage.

We heard our bench barrier fail behind us, and Joe's lifeless eyes watched as our mob -now more than thirty members thick- raced to get first dibs on these four students. The end of the fence was now less than twenty yards away.

Ginger turned very serious. "Listen to me. All of you. Five feet from the fence, we are going to start running. As fast as we can, without looking back." She looked at Charles, who was seventy pounds overweight and already exhausted from the most physical activity his body had seen in years. I remembered a saying from middle school: _You don't have to out-swim the shark. Just the person next to you. _It should have been funnier.

I was almost immediately ashamed. Even so, it was not friendship, but simple logic that pushed the thought from my mind. Charles was a curve-ruining Biology major, a full year ahead of anyone else in his class in the pre-med program. I wasn't expecting him to find a cure, but he could at least help us better understand the situation. Ginger was the resident psychologist at the university medical center, and, though I believe psychologist roughly translates to "fake doctor," I was almost sure that some if not most of the regular people we encountered -ourselves included- were going to be in need of a shrink. Jay could bench 325 pounds and had already proved himself a proficient zombie-tackler.

I was a music major, and an average one at that. Unless music really could soothe the savage beast, it would make the most sense for _me_ to be the shark bait. I hoped the thought hadn't crossed anyone else's mind.

Ginger was saying something else, but the adrenaline pumping through me drowned her out. I had just remembered that the university president was a certified NRA member. He went hunting every weekend provided that our football team wasn't playing a home game, and was rumored to have shot an intruder on his property on more than one occasion prior to his reign in office. Despite a strict no-firearms policy on campus, I just knew that the guy had racks and shelves filled to bursting with shotguns and deer rifles. I had never fired a gun in my life, but suddenly I knew no sweeter a sound than a spent shell cartridge ejecting from a freshly operated firearm. We might not even need to make it all the way to the library; if the ammo held out (provided that at least one of us knew how to _work_ a firearm), we could make our stand right here.

I thought Ginger was still talking, and for the first time it annoyed me. Surely there couldn't be anything more to say! The plan was simple: run, get inside, fortify, fight. It was then I noticed that we had stopped running, and she was frantically trying to stop us. Ginger was 5'3" and a buck even, trying to hold back three desperate, full-grown men. I almost loved this woman, but if she stood between me and safety, chivalry would fly out of the window. She pointed up, and I realized that it was not my adrenaline that muffled her words.

Three fighter jets, each one looking able to out fly God and all His angels, were screaming toward us.

I saw Jay's fist punch the air above him, and he let out a howl that pierced through the roar of the jets' engines. Charles dropped to his knees, from exhaustion and gratitude equally, and Ginger waved pleasantly, as if to an old friend. The moment felt surreal, and I imagined that if I ever at some point were to fall victim to drugs I'd have something to reference. Perhaps it was this feeling of detachedness that allowed my mind to stay clear enough to see two black dots released from the bowels of the jets, like pigeons over a statue.

"_Run!_" I shouted and pushed pass my friends towards the house. My breath once again left me, my legs caught on fire again, and the stitch in my side was replaced by a staple, but I ran faster than I ever had before. Power Suit Woman, Mr. Important, Joe, and even the library were all but forgotten as I quickly covered the distance to the bashed-in entrance of this once lovely estate, and I dared not look back to see if the others were bothering to follow. I spared enough time to hope they were.

All of a sudden I was in a spacious living room. I acknowledged the existence of a

big-screen television, a expensive suede couch, and some sort of potted plant that looked far too large to belong indoors. I also noted a corpse sprawled out in the floor, facing the doorway, right about as I tripped over it. I was sent flailing wildly down a hallway in a half-tripping, half recovering state, where my legs were keeping pace with my unbalanced body, but no more. My momentum didn't ebb as I crashed through the door at the end of the hallway, down an unexpected flight of stairs that I descended on my face more than anything else. At the bottom, I could smell mold and mildew, and the air was very cold. It was a basement, I presumed. I craned my neck, sending a wave of pain down my shoulder that felt too low, but didn't take my eyes off the one source of light made by my entry through the closed door. Three figures, one small, one large, and one round launched themselves after me, and then the sky reigned fire down upon Joe and all his brethren.


	2. Jay

I felt like wringing that asshole's neck when he pushed pass me. Turns out that that would have been a bad move, but I still felt like it. In fact, I like to think that if I didn't have such a temper, I wouldn't have chased after Tyler when he ran for that friggin' mansion, and Ginger, fat-ass, and me all would have just stood there, staring at those jets like deer at headlights until they bombed the hell out of us and everything else.

But thanks to my desire to wreak havoc on his larynx, we chased Tyler all the way into the basement of that house. There was a dead woman right there in the door, and I almost laughed when I saw him trip over it. I didn't laugh though, because I had enough sense to know that it wasn't funny just yet. Later, in a few weeks, when all of this was just a memory, then yeah, we'd laugh about it. But not now.

Come to think of it, I don't even know why Ginger and Charles bothered to follow me. We didn't know the true intent of those jets like Tyler somehow did, so I figured that they'd just stand there waiting for salvation or something and go get that dumbass later. Maybe Ginger wanted to make sure I didn't kill him after all the shit we'd been through, and then Charles would be left alone, and he wouldn't like that, so he followed too.

I said something like, "Where the fuck are you going, Ty?!" before sprinting after him, and then Gingy and fat-ass followed. Like I said, he tripped, flew through the doorway, and then down a flight of stairs. I could've sworn I heard something of his crack on the way down. We made it about to the head of that stairway before something knocked us the rest of the way down. It wasn't like a shove, or nothing, it was like...to be honest, I can't really describe it, but it was loud as hell and burned like it too. Fuckin' jets were dropping _bombs_ on us. Not ladders like they were supposed to, but _bombs._

I don't remember much after that. I just woke up some time later in the dark. I'll admit, I almost pissed myself from fear, I wouldn't be a man if I didn't admit at least that much. It was black as hell at night, (a lot of things reminded me of hell, lately) and I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. It was the kind of dark you get when your little brother accidentally turns off the light after taking a piss while you're in the shower: it's sudden, scary because you weren't expecting it and you're in a very vulnerable position, and their isn't shit you can do about it except call for someone to turn the light back on.

I didn't call for anybody -at least I have that much sense- but I sure felt like it. The air was really cold, especially compared to the fire from the explosion; I couldn't tell, but I think my back was burned up pretty bad. The air was really wet, too, and I was laying on concrete, or at least I think it was concrete. After the initial shock was over, it kind of felt good, laying there in the dark, letting the coldness of the ground work it's wonders on my burned-up lats. I felt like I could lay there forever. Kind of like when I used to wake up every morning before school, and just stay in bed for as long as I could because I knew that whatever was waiting for me at school couldn't compare to the warmth and comfort of the sack. It would always take mom four or fives times knocking at the door -well, banging on it really, by the third time- to get me up; by then it was five minutes before class started. She did that every day until...well, until she couldn't do that anymore. After that, I just set my alarm earlier so I could essentially do the same thing, except I'd have to play mom for everybody else and bang on my little brothers' doors. I didn't gripe about having to do that, but I still wish mom could've done it instead. She was so much better at it!

I probably would have laid there until Zack woke me up (I thought I was clever, giving those zombies a nickname. Made'em feel less threatening, like they were just the douchebag who hogged the coffee machine every morning.), but I started to smell smoke. As much as I tried to fight it, it's just not possible to relax when you smell smoke outside barbecues and 4th of July stuff.

"Hey, anybody else up?" I called into the darkness. Sure was fun last night at the sleepover, gals, but don't sleep in too late or your curls will fall out. Fuck.

I waited a couple of seconds with no reply. I knew they were alive, Tyler and Ginger and even fat-ass, so they must not have regained consciousness yet. After all, I made it, so they should have too. I was so sure I heard them behind me... "Tyler! Get up, man! Ginger!"

I felt a fresh wave of fear after they didn't answer for a second time. What if something had happened to them? Shit, something _did_ happen to them, fucking _bombs_ happened to them, but we got to shelter in time, or at least I think we did. Still, I tried to sit up, see if all my bits and pieces were still there, and after I was sure they were, I opted to search the room.

Well, maybe "search" is kind of stretching it. I just sort of crawled on my hands and knees, feeling everything, knocking over this old guy's shit and getting dust and cobwebs in my hair and lungs. Every now and then I'd try calling for the crew in that loud-whisper-that-defeated-the-purpose-of-a-whisper and each time they didn't answer me and I started to freak out a little more. I knew I was easily the toughest of the four of us, and that's simple logic, not ego, so it only made sense that I'd be the first one to recover from something like that, but I didn't use logic all that well when things were going _fine,_ let alone stuck in the dark after getting bombed after getting chased by zombies after going through an average day of college classes. I started thinking that maybe it was best for me _not_ to find them. They may have been fried, or crushed, or worse. What if they had turned into those things? Fat-ass said that only people who were bitten could come back as zombies, but what the hell did he know about whatever was going on here? More than I did, sure, but that didn't mean he knew all the details. I didn't want my friends to be...well, I guess I really shouldn't call them "friends" just yet, I met them about an hour after the shit hit the fan yesterday...wait, was that yesterday? How long had I been out? What if they had already left me behind? Fuck.

But I kept looking. On my hands and knees, I searched for what felt like an hour, at a snail's pace, half in desperation of wanting to find at least one of them alive, and half in fear of finding one of them dead.

After a while of searching in pitch black darkness, whatever was blocking the light from Tyler's romp into this abyss vacated the vicinity, and a pale light forced its way through. It wasn't the piercing, vibrant, God-in-His-Heaven kind of light I had hoped for; it looked like night had fallen in the time we -well, I- was out. I still couldn't read what was on my class ring, but I could make out a few shadows on the broken stairway as well as faint outlines of whatever knick-knacks were between me and the door. Somehow I liked that less than seeing nothing at all.

But then I _did_ see something I liked, something that was undeniable human: the ghostly glow-in-the-dark hour and minute hands of a small wristwatch. I couldn't remember if anybody in our little group wore a wristwatch, but I nonetheless shambled the rest of the way towards it. If I had been in my right mind, I probably would have noticed that it was laying horizontally, and therefore couldn't have been on anybody's wrist... actually, I probably wouldn't have, Charles would have, Ginger would have, Tyler probably would have, but not me, but I still had this mad hope for... well, something, right up until I actually picked the thing up. It felt dusty and cold.

I felt like throwing the thing across the room. I imagined how it would sound when it shattered against the far wall or something in between, and then how it would thunk against the concrete-esque floor. But I didn't. Instead, I just let out a small sigh and put it back on the shelf. When I did, my hand fell on top of another watch, this one with a couple of buttons on the side. Well, lookiee here if I didn't stumble upon some old geezer's watch collection. Fuck.

I guess this one was digital, because when I picked it up -I have a pretty bad habit of picking up things that don't belong to me- I hit a button on one side and the thing beeped. It was very subtle and very quiet, just enough for the watch to let you know it was working fine and dandy if not a little low on juice, but it may as well have been a blow horn for all the shock it gave me. It was so... I don't know, _un-organic._ Since I woke up, it had been just me and the wind, and the wind was quiet company. I relished this small bit of noise so much that I hit the button again, and again it beeped obediently. So I had found a new friend, huh? Someone that would help me get through this mess, show me the way, and even tell me what time it was, and how long it had been since I went completely crazy. Fuck.

The third time I made my little friend beep, something else responded. It was a low, tired-sounding moan, coming from about ground level less than five yards away from me.

I tried to feel something; I wanted to be hopeful, or joyful, or even fearful, but the past hour of searching fruitlessly in the dark had left me so drained, I just didn't have it in me to conjure up an emotional response. Instead, I just waited for something to happen. And when nothing did, I beeped again.

Finally, moan-maker spoke up. "Who is that?" it said. Zack didn't ask questions, so I would have felt relief if I had anything left in the tank. I was pretty sure it was a dude's voice, too.

"It's me," I answered.

"Who're you?"

"I'm me, I just told you."

"But who _are_ you?"

"I just fucking told you, it's _me._"

"Oh, you're Jay."

"Yeah, and who are you?"

"Tyler. I'd thought we'd met?"

He started shuffling there in the dark, all those wonderfully human swishes and ruffles that I couldn't wait to take for granted again. It was slow and unhurried, and really _did_ remind me of someone getting out of bed, someone who had it tough yesterday and wanted nothing more than to put his knee back to his chest and let the Z's fly all whilly-nilly. I wondered if I should...I don't know, help him or something, it just felt like something to do, but decided against it. I guess it felt too much like ignoring a drowning man in the ocean and then hindering him with help once he made it to shore. I read that somewhere, I'm sure, in an English literature class. There probably weren't going to be any more English literature classes for a while, and I let it pocket itself in my mind that maybe Zack had done something good for the world after all.

Tyler inhaled sharply next to me, and slapped the offending part of himself out of instinct, which of course probably just did more damage. He groaned like someone taking a cruiser weight dump.

"Shit...I think I dislocated my shoulder, man," he said quietly.

"Yeah, probably. You pretty much faceboarded down those stairs."

"Faceboarding, huh?"

He didn't say much after that for a while. I thought that awkward silences had died along with all of those people on campus, but if it did, it reanimated like them, too. "Where are we?" I asked.

"We're in the house you followed me in."

"Oh."

There was another silence, another pause in our attempt at re-establishing human contact. Tyler beat me to breaking this one.

"So, you followed me?" he said, very quietly.

"Yes," I said, much louder. I figured that the best way of trying to get things back to normal, to re-make the rules of common courtesy, was to break them. "You just said that. I wouldn't be here if I hadn't." I knew what he was going to ask next. And I was right, it was just a whisper:

"Did they come with you?"

I guess that's when I knew that we were in this for the long run. We needed each other's company. I'm not sure if we _liked_ each other, or could even _stand_ each other, but goddam it we _needed_

each other. No hugs, no there-theres, we just needed to see someone a second and third time, to know that there was another person, who, in spite of any physical or mental or emotional or political or religious difference that separated you before Zack, was going through the same shit you were, and needed help just like you. I couldn't answer him right away, and when I did I made sure that he didn't know I thought that.

"I don't fucking know. They were behind me when I checked last." It probably didn't help the poor kid's emotional state, but emotions really didn't count for shit anymore. Tyler was silent again after that, and this time I didn't bother even trying. Better to leave each man to his own thought for a while, let him brood or think or think about brooding until he can put enough of his shit in a pile and move on. At least, I thought that was best, until he let out this long, wavering sigh, only it wasn't a sigh, it sounded more like: _I don't have it in me even to break down and cry. _God damn it, I'm an asshole casserole.

"How's your shoulder?"

No answer. Probably trying to get the quiver out of his voice; God forbid you show the jock a sign of weakness, he'll eat you alive, give you a wedgie, and use you to slow down ole' Zack. Fuck.

"I've been looking for them for a while. I don't guess you got a light on you, do you?"

He sniffed, then coughed to make it seem like allergies. "Yeah, actually, I do. On my key chain. It's not much, I use it to find the key hole in my car at night, but it works. If they're...awake, they'll probably see it before we see them."

"Fine, whatever. Give me your keys, and stay put."

"But-"

"Your shoulder, remember?"

He either reasoned that either he was, in fact, unable to move well, or it was simply not worth the effort to argue with me, but he gave me his keys, with the flashlight singled out. Flashlight was stretching it, it was more like an electronic firefly, but now I could see two feet in front of me in about a four inch radius. If I hurried, I'd have half of the basement searched by next month. Fuck.

Nonetheless, I trudged away, backtracking towards the door, sweeping in front of me with Tyler's keys, illuminating corners of boxes and bottoms of shelves and even the carcass of a rat in a mousetrap, but nothing that was or could have once been Ginger or fat-ass. I must have looked pretty stupid, crawling on my hands and knees, nose inches from the ground and butt held presentably up in the air, raking a band nerd's keys across the floor like a fucking mine detector. I could almost _feel_ Tyler laughing at me, and so I kept it up for a while longer. I sort of felt bad; I know I'm not the nicest asshole in the world. Some people think that, oh, I just want to keep up the jock image, the big, tough, lumbering brute that no one messes with, that under my armor, I'm a sweet innocent little lamb with the heart of a prince and the soul of a poet. Fuck. That image is the _nice_ me, the _kind_ Jay; I make regular assholes seem like just colons. I wasn't abused too much (or too little) as a kid, just the right amount of discipline, I always did my homework, wasn't in trouble all the time, just every now and then, and I actually had a lot of friends, close friends that I wondered about when I was barricading that exit door and when I rammed a business lady like a fullback. I'm a prick, a jerk, a bastard to the core. Everyone loves me, and I don't know why, but I keep on being an asshole.

"You could climb the stairs, you know." _Or are you afraid?_, I heard under that. "There are probably flashlights and stuff upstairs." _And if you had the brainpower of a six-year-old with Down's Syndrome, you'd know that. _"And if you find any guns, bring me one." _They might still be out there. _

He said everything like he was afraid I was going to come over and throttle him for talking down to me, but I knew he was right. Truth was, I just wasn't ready to see again. I wanted to hold on to the dream that maybe what had happened didn't really happen, that I was waking up from a hazing ritual from the football team or from a really bad binge drinking episode. I didn't want to leave the dark and _know_ again. It was okay to not know in the dark. Dark was where everything was uncertain, that what you _thought_ could be true and what _was_ true could always be two different things or one in the same, depending on your preference. It is always so much easier to imagine in the dark, so much easier to hope for something different, because you can't see anything; how can you be sure that something exists if you can't see it? The second I walked or crawled or hobbled up the stairs and through what was left of the door, things would exist again that maybe I wished didn't. And I was scared.

But I tossed the keys back in Tyler's general direction and headed for the door. It seemed so abrupt, that I would head into the unknown with so little preparation, but how much preparation was I going to get done when I couldn't see if my fly was still zipped?

I didn't dare head up the stairs fully upright; that'd be one hell of a way to end it all, slipping in the dark down a flight of stairs and breaking my neck. Survive Zack, fall to gravity. So I took each step with a foot and a hand, each one creaking just as you thought it should, until my hand found its way to the doorknob. I thought for a moment, then felt around for a light switch. No such luck. So out the door I went, and with the sudden flood of light came the awful stench that I would grow used to over the next few days.

Burnt hair.

You'd think it'd be burnt flesh, because there is so much more of it, but the hair is what can really bring you to your knees. If you want to know the truth, without thinking I'm a sick bastard, burnt flesh smells kind of good. A little bit like hamburgers. Meat is meat, I guess, but if you've ever played around too much with a grill lighter, you'd know that hair burns good, and it smells _horrible._ The kind of smell that you can taste, if you breath through your mouth too hard. It's not the kind of welcome you want to have going back into the world.

The house, or mansion, or whatever, actually held up through the explosion very well. You know, in terms of what a bomb can do. Most of the windows were blown out or at the very least cracked and spider-webbed beyond recognition, and most of the furniture had that black singe on the corners, but it was nonetheless still in better shape than my dorm room. What that says about my dorm room remains out of the discussion.

The source of that stench was easy to find. In the front yard -I was at just the right angle to see out of the front windows- was a nice thick blanket of roasted Zack.

I almost felt a sense of retribution, that we had beaten the mob that chased us so relentlessly through the campus center, that evil had finally felt the almighty bitch-slap of justice, you know? I sort of forgave the jets. The way they probably saw it, bombs were a better way out than being eaten alive, so any non-zombie targets underneath them were actually being done a favor. And it worked out in the end, so what did it matter?

As I looked around the spacious living room when I got to the end of the hallway, I realized that I didn't have the slightest idea where to start looking. I opened the nearest drawer, found a couple of letters and a rubber band, closed it, opened another, closed it, and resumed standing there waiting to be guided by some unseen force to find-

_Thump._

I wasn't alone up here. Fuck.

The closest thing to a survivor's manual that I'd ever came into contact with were the old horror movies, and if I played by the same rules by which they were governed, then, as a manly white male, I was obligated to investigate the noise without any forethought whatsoever. I'd cautiously approach the source of the noise, it would have to be behind a door of some sort, maybe a closet, and take no less than five seconds to reach for the knob. Then, violins and a drum roll, I'd swing the door open and all would be silent as I found nothing there, after which I would breathe a sigh of relief. Then, _it_ pounces me from behind.

I didn't think that Zack had the brainpower for stealth, and that was to say any of them survived the bombs, but I wasn't taking any chances. I headed east -or at least right- of the noise towards the kitchen, because obviously, everywhere else in the house that wasn't in the area of that noise was guaranteed safe, and opened the dishwasher. I searched until I found it, the big chef's cleaver that you can never remember using but nonetheless ends up in the dishwasher every Thursday, then started off, in a combat crouch, towards my target.

I identified the source of the _Thump _as a closet of some sort about a hop away from the front door. The explosion had jarred loose a bookcase from the adjacent wall, and it had fallen (and with it, all five of the books it held) against the door, effectively barricading the _Thump_er inside.

I reached the closet, and suddenly my cleaver felt about as threatening as a ham sandwich. "Come out," I said, because _Thump_er was probably just shy despite having the strength to move an extremely expensive and heavy-looking bookcase away from the door. "Come out, you bastard, I'll chop your fucking neck off."

I wielded my ham sandwich and waited for _Thump_er to respond.

Shuffling. Then, "...Jay? Jay is that you?"

Ginger.

"Jay, the door is stuck!"

Charles.

They'd had taken cover in here, instead of following the dumbass duo down into a cellar. And it sounded like they fared much better, aside from being trapped.

I was so relieved, I hadn't even realized that I was still standing there as they pleaded for my help.

"Jay, we're trapped! Help us!"

"Oh...sorry guys. Hold on, I bet I can move this bookcase..."

"Where's Tyler?"

"Who?" I said, grunting.

"Tyler!"

"Oh, yeah," Bookcases are very heavy, did you know that? And it's hard to concentrate on talking when you are moving something heavy, did you know _that? _Because they apparently didn't. "He's...fine, in the basement...shoulder's banged up, but..."

"What about the zombies?"

"Oh, Ginger, don't call them that, it's not at all-"

"They're dead, or at least the ones in front of the house are. Burnt to a crisp."

"So, we made it?"

"Yeah, I guess we did."

The bookcase slammed back against the wall with a resounding thud, tilted dangerously back towards me, then hobbled the rest of the way in place.

The door opened, and Ginger and Charles came out slowly. I thought about hugging them, then didn't.

One of them had found a flashlight in the closet, and I led them back down the stairs to a very relieved Tyler. The thud form the bookcase must have scared the piss out of him. I -rather forcefully- encouraged his shoulder back into place, and then we each helped him back up the stairs.

We had survived. Zack was a pussy, and we had survived.

The wind blew past us, and it smelled like victory (and burnt hair, which more than tainted victory, be I tried my best to ignore it), except for one small detail.

Carried by that wind, were the moans.

**Author's Note: So yeah, I decided to do something different with this chapter. In fact, that's kind of what I aim to do with all of them; let each character have their turn at telling you the story. This time it was Jay. Thanks for all the reviews so far, and please let me know what you think!**


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